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About a month ago, BioJobBlog in association with the JobJob Health Job Board launched the BioJobCenter; an automated job board designed to help persons looking for employment in the life sciences industry. While the site has been well received, we decided to create a widget for BioJobBlog that features the types of job openings that exist @ the BioJobCenter. The widget will allow readers to apply and search for jobs directly from the BioJobBlog website.

The widget is located in the upper left hand side of the BioJobBlog sidebar (in case you haven’t noticed). Job seekers who click on a job title are taken to the BioJobCenter where they can directly apply for the job (after you join the site). Refreshing the BioJobBlog page will display a new list of job openings! If you are looking for specific jobs in specific locations you can search for more jobs by surfing over to the BioJobCenter and conducting a formal job search there. 

In other news, JobJobHealth recently released an iPhone app that allows users to conduct job searches on their phones. The app (JobJobHealth) is available in the iTunes store!

Check it out!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Over the past few years, life sciences companies have shed over 200,000 jobs. Unfortunately, downsizing at some of these companies may not be over yet. Nevertheless, companies are always looking to recruit new talent to keep up with normal job turnover rates or to replace highly specialized employees whose skills sets are essential to successfully running the business. Because many of these former life sciences employees possessed special or arcane talents and skill sets, advertising for their replacements using conventional methods like job boards and print ad advertising have historically met with limited success. The advent of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have prompted HR professionals and hiring managers at some life sciences companies to test social media as a recruitment tool.

While Facebook may come to mind as the most likely social media tool for this purpose, it isn’t! This is because Facebook is primarily a social, not a professional network like LinkedIn or BioCrowd. Further, despite Facebook’s gargantuan size, the lack of real time interaction coupled with the sheer volume of updates, ads, activities and games at the site render it largely ineffective as a job advertising or recruiting tool.

Twitter, on the other hand, is an ideal medium to advertise jobs and attract new talent. This is because information that is broadcasted on Twitter has the potential to reaches large numbers of persons very rapidly. Moreover, regular Twitter users pay attention to activity on their feeds and like to “retweet” information that they find useful or helpful to their followers. Finally, many Twitter users regularly cull their follower lists to more accurately reflect their interests which suggest that the quality/focus of most follower lists on Twitter far surpasses that of friend networks on Facebook. For example, I manage the @BioCrowd Twitter feed. To that end, I decide who BioCrowd follows and wants to follow. And, not surprisingly, I only follow or allow individuals to follow BioCrowd  who are interested or work in the life sciences. Currently, BioCrowd has over 1,300 followers, all of whom work or are involved in some aspect of the life sciences industry. Because, I have intentionally created a highly specialized network of life sciences professionals, the likelihood of a prospective employer finding a “right fit” candidate by tweeting a job ad to the BioCrowd network greatly increases. Further, the ability of Twitter users to direct the job tweet to specific followers or retweet it preserves the longevity of the ad and improves its effectiveness. And, perhaps the best thing about using Twitter as a job announcement platform is that it is free!

The use of social media as a recruiting and retention tool by Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Best Buy and others is not new. However, its use as a recruitment platform by life sciences companies is very new to the life sciences companies. As many you may know, the life sciences industry has been slow to adopt the use of social media. Nevertheless, several companies like Merck (@merckcareers1) and AstraZeneca (@JoinAstraZeneca and @AstraZeneca Jobs) have decided to boldly go where no other pharmaceutical companies have gone before and are beginning to experiment with Twitter as a recruiting tool.  

About a year ago, I wrote a post that suggested that social media would be an ideal recruitment and retention tool for most life sciences companies. The fact that a couple of companies are testing this idea suggests that my idea may be a good one! 

If you know of other companies using Twitter to recruit new employees, please leave a comment or contact me.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (@BioCrowd)

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"I want to know if you're somebody who feels comfortable enough to talk about dumb things that you have done or dumb advice that you have taken.  It tells you something about the character of the person."

---Founder and CEO of TheLadders.com, a job search Web site, when asked "What's the most effective question that you use in most interview?"

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Carl Icahn, who controls about 4.9% of the outstanding shares of Genzyme’s stock, is trying to get himself and three persons loyal to him elected to the Genzyme board of directors via a proxy fight. 

Icahn has publicly stated that embattled Genzyme CEO, Henri Termeer must go after running the company for the past 25 years. Icahn contends that Termeer has made many bad decisions during his tenure and the recent highly publicized manufacturing problems at the company are causing Genzyme’s stock to plummet.

Icahn’s slate of proposed board members include himself, Dr. Richard C. Mulligan, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Alexander J. Denner an Icahn confidant and Dr. Stephen J. Burakoff, Director of the Tish Cancer Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. If elected the Icahn slate will replace Mr. Termeer, are Connie Mack III, a former United States senator; Richard F. Syron, the former chief executive of Freddie Mac and of Thermo Electron, a scientific instrument company; and Charles L. Cooney, a professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As many of you may know, Icahn, who is always referred to as an “activist investor” is no stranger to proxy fights or controversy. Previously, he attempted to oust members of the Biogen-IDEC board of directors—an underperforming company according to Icahn—and more recently, publicly out-maneuvered and humiliated Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) CEO Jim Cornelius by selling ImClone—a long-time BMS co-marketing partner of the blockbuster colorectal cancer drug Erbitux— to Eli Lilly.

Over the years, I have been a staunch critic of Icahn. However, I am beginning to realize that there is a “method to his madness” and surprisingly, things always seem to change for the better at companies that are on his radar screen. Like him or not, Icahn demands performance from the companies that he invests in and will relentlessly work on behalf of himself and other shareholders to get the ROI that he expects.

Until next time,

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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Biogen Idec today announced that Dr. Eric K. Rowinsky and Dr. Stephen A. Sherwin have been appointed to its Board of Directors pursuant to an agreement with Icahn Partners. Dr. Rowinsky was proposed as a nominee to the Board by Icahn Partners and Dr. Sherwin was selected by the Company as part of its process to identify new directors.

"Under the terms of the agreement, Icahn Partners has agreed to vote its shares at the 2010 Annual Meeting for Biogen Idec's nominees, who will include current directors Nancy L. Leaming and Brian S. Posner as well as Drs. Rowinsky and Sherwin. In addition, under the terms of the agreement, Icahn Partners will withdraw its notice of nomination of persons for election as directors and its proposal to amend Biogen Idec's Bylaws to limit the size of the Board."

As you may recall, Icahn tried to wrest control of the company from its current management team in an attempt to force the company to sell itself because Icahn believed that its stock price was undervalued. Since that time, it appears that Biogen Idec executives are seeking to appease Icahn rather than publicly fight with him over the value of the company. Don’t be surprised if Biogen Idec is sold to a large pharmaceutical company by the end of this year.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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Chalk up one for the good guys (good is a relative term). Carl Icahn has given up on his quest to gain control of the Cambridge-based biotechnology giant, Biogen/IDEC. Actually, he was forced to give up because the slate of board members that he hoped would be elected to the Biogen/IDEC board failed to gain shareholder support and lost its bid for the board at a recent shareholder meeting.

Icahn, who owns about 4% of outstanding shares of the company, wanted to gain control of the Biogen/IDEC board so that he could force the company to try once again to sell itself to a large pharmaceutical company (rather than remain independent). As you may recall, the company tried to sell itself late last year but failed to find any buyers. Icahn accused the company of not trying hard enough! Give it a break Carl…its not always about you!

Despite the fact that Carl has his name on a molecular biology building at Princeton University (he is an alumnus), he knows very little about the biotechnology business. My advice to him is to raid companies that make commodities that he knows something about—widgets, plastics, automobiles — maybe even oil.

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try Biogen/IDEC)!!!!!!!!

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